As just a typical user who wants things to work, I've been monitoring the
discussion about mac-fdisk. I've been using pdisk on Mac OS for years,
along with mac-fdisk on mac68k and powerpc GNU/Linux distributions. If
mac-fdisk goes away and there isn't an acceptable command-line alternative,
I'll either create partitions ahead of time in Mac OS (or a GNU/Linux
distribution that still supports mac-fdisk), or I won't use that
distribution. It would be disappointing if Debian stops supporting
powerpc, but there are always alternatives.
-s
On 9/22/17 6:57 PM, Finn Thain wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Sep 2017, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>
>> On 09/22/2017 01:55 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>>> It fails with:
>>>
>>> fdisklabel.c: At top level:
>>> fdisklabel.c:387:5: error: expected identifier or '(' before 'else'
>>> else if (c == 'n')
>>> ^~~~
>>> fdisklabel.c:389:1: error: expected identifier or '(' before '}' token
>>> }
>>> ^
>> So, the thing is, mac-fdisk requires quite some work to get it compile
>> on amd64.
> And that could be a problem when powerpc ceases to be a release arch.
>
>> It's full of statements like "if defined(i386)" and building the package
>> generates tons of warnings.
>>
> Apple ported pdisk to powerpc as well as intel. I don't know whether those
> were 64 or 32 bit binaries or both (fat). But it could save us a lot of
> effort.
>
>> This is basically what I was talking about. The code hasn't been touched
>> for ages and is it bitrotten and apparently no one is willing to step up
>> and maintain the code.
>>
> It's a good story, but the fact is I stepped up and sent a patch in April
> and you subsequently stepped up and offered to "adopt" the package after
> Michael admitted that it had been neglected.
>
>> So, either someone goes ahead and picks up upstream maintainership or we
>> have to remove the package.
>>
> It appears that you are no longer willing to look after mac-fdisk. That's
> fine. I don't expect you to take responsibility for every neglected
> package.
>
> Michael, perhaps you and I can share that responsibility? According to
> https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mac-fdisk
> you are still the maintainer.
>
.
